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[Page 66]
will be, I wouldn't care to lose the job only; I would hate more to be an "also ran". Everything is quiet here but the roads are carrying all the traffic they can bear. I had a good swim this morning* - it's very bracing. I don't pretend that this is a letter, for I have to go to lunch almost right away and begin work immediately after.
France 7/8/18.
Letters evidently take longer now, for your letter of the 2nd only got here to-day. It was very welcome and I thank you for it. I have been hard at it all to-day, trying to finish some sketches and enjoyed doing them, except that the obligation to get them out in a hurry makes me too anxious. Owing to Jerry being over last night I got little sleep, for after that experience in the wood, bombs "put the wind up" me. It has been a beautiful day and if I could have had my wish I would have been out of doors working, but, this sudden call for finished things, at a time when I should be getting sketch matter for pictures later to be finished, kept me out in. It just happens too, that, here, there are more things of more interest, than at any place I've yet seen. From the window of the room I've had assigned me to work in, is a most lovely view. About a mile away the horizon is formed by the ridge of a round-backed hill running dead level high across the view that the window frames. Part of it is topped by a wood of trees of even height. Immediately below the window is what once was a lawn, about 75 yards wide, flanked on either side by trees and this avenue'd lawn runs downhill for about 150 yards to a sheet of water covered with lily pads and its marge thick with tall reeds. The lawn continues on the far side of the river (which is here 100 yds. wide) for about 300 yds. and there it stops against a wall of tall, graceful trees whose tops just allow the hill to be seen - a mile away. It is all silvery grey-green now, with the sun gone down. A few naked Aussies are drying themselves on the bank of the lake and three clothed ones are enjoying themselves in a sort of gondola, which at one time belonged to the chatelain. In the middle distance a camp of horses and wagons is spread out on what was once the once lawn. Some planes are coming home to roost and out on the road, which I can't see, is the noise of endless wagons
*In the Somme